Modi government trying to turn India into an Orwellian State: Congress

The Congress has raised a red flag on Modi government's intentions to peep into the life of citizens and thus violate their constitutional right to privacy through social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, Linkedin, Flickr, Tumblr, Pinterest, Play Store and even Email, News, Blogs, Forums and even Complaint Websites.

Giving details of a tender floated by the Union Ministry for Information & Broadcasting inviting software companies to build a technology platform to collect digital media chatter from all core social media platforms as well as digital platforms, Congress said it is clear now that "attack on people's privacy has become the main weapon of the Modi government."

"Modi government is trying to establish what George Orwell wrote in 1930s in his novel 1984 that you cannot escape from the big brother, it is watching you. We demand from the government to spell out why it has decided to create this hub and why there is no a single sentence to ensure that data will not be decrypted and will remain in encrypted form," Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.

"You cannot peek into my life except in exceptional cases with specific authorisation not below the rank of ACP level officer. Not only we have a comprehensive 9 Judges Bench order on privacy, there is Article 21 — a bull work and Article 19 on Human Rights including privacy," he added.

According to the tender floated by Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Ltd (BECIL), a Mini Ratna company, a request for proposal (RFP) was called on April 25, 2018 for selection of agency SITC of software and service and support for function operation and maintenance of Social Media Communication Hub under the Ministry of I&B at a cost of Rs 42 crore.

Under the scope of work, the RFP asks for developing a technology platform to collect digital media chatter from all core Social media platforms as well as digital platforms like news, blogs and forums along with a proprietary mobile insights platform in single system providing real time insights.

The platform will be deployed in the private data centre and will need to integrate with the mobile platform database for a seamless view across all data platforms, it says.

The RFP explains that the platform is expected to not only listen to the standard digital channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Instagram, Linkedin, Flickr, Tumblr, Pinterest, Play Store, email, News, Blogs, Forums, Complaint Websites but also enable easy extension to integrate proprietary data sources like he mobile insight platforms.

"Real time integration of the Facebook and twitter needs to be demonstrated. Also the platform will need to demonstrate the ability to configure data collection, actual data collection and insights and response to the platform.

Besides, it also seeks building a conversation archive having an ability to seek historic conversation of each user in a reverse chronological manner along with the ability to merge conversations across channels and Meta data software to provide maximum meta-data per mention to help understand the situation better.

"All these point to the dangers of an Orwellian state. We reserve all our legal rights to challenge it, after all privacy is a constitutional right. The Supreme Court itself asserted it comprehensively. But first we want to hear why it was necessary to spend tax payers Rs. 42 crore to snoop on them," said Singhvi.